


We're Both So Sorry

by HeyItsGee



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Family Dynamics, Father-Son Relationship, Grief/Mourning, Grieving Peter Parker, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 16:54:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21359530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeyItsGee/pseuds/HeyItsGee
Summary: Won the Infinity War. Saved the world. Brought back the ones taken away by the Snap. Gave humanity its future back—and died in the doing. Anthony Edward Stark was a hero. A saviour. A superhero. An Avenger.But he was also a friend. A teammate. A husband. A father. An unplanned ‘Dad’ who went by the name of ‘Mr Stark’.Legends get to be grieved, too—they get to leave collateral damage, too—, and this particular legend has left quite a trail of mourners behind. One of them is Peter Parker. Spiderman. Pete. Kid… Son. And another one is Virginia ‘Pepper’ Potts. Two lonely souls that might just need somebody to lean on at the end of the day.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	We're Both So Sorry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CandyBear242](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandyBear242/gifts).

It’s scorching hot in New York City, Peter is crazy about vanilla ice-creams, and yet the one he bought ten minutes ago remains untouched as it melts into a pastel yellow puddle of a quickly-fading coolness. Because ten minutes ago Peter’s gaze caught a man with a ridiculously well-trimmed beard who left him staring at nowhere as he tried to gasp some air inside his suddenly too-small lungs, and he can’t snap out of it. Because ten minutes ago Peter found himself back up in space, frightened nearly to the point of wetting his underwear, and he can’t stop seeing the insides of the spaceship rushing past him as he dodges Ebony Maw’s attempts at killing him. Because ten minutes ago Peter felt the hole in his chest tear him apart again, pulsing, hungry for any happy or mildly good feeling to feast on. Because.

Because Mister Stark is dead. Fucking dead and gone. 

Gone to a place where Peter can’t follow him. A ship he couldn’t board by accident.

By accident, he had to die to save the universe.

The universe, in its vast majority, couldn’t care less that Mister Stark is dead.

And Mister Stark is still dead. Fucking dead and gone.

“Peter? Hey. Earth calling Pete.” Peter is only vaguely conscious that he’s not in the battlefield watching Mister Stark snap his fingers. Even though he can hear MJ just fine, he doesn’t _ listen _to her. His ears are too busy with the deafening ‘snap’ that put an end to so many things. The Blip that marked a beginning for so many others. Like the second war against Thanos, like his own second life. Like Tony’s second—and final—fight against the Titanian genocide.

Suddenly it’s hard to breathe, to take the time even to blink, because everything is happening again all around him. Out of the fourteen million and sixty-five futures that might have been, Peter watches as the one that unfortunately was unfolds. All the screams, all the grunts. All the weapons slicing through bodies. All the people running, clashing against each other. The Wakandan and Asgardian armies marching through Strange’s portals, the spaceships from faraway planets flying into the battlefield. Mister Stark’s armours rushing into combat. 

Tony hugging him in the midst of the havoc, without saying a thing. His arms dressed in iron, yet soft against Peter’s skin. His breath warm against Peter’s ear when he leaned in and, so quietly that even Peter nearly missed it, he whispered, “I’ve missed you, son.” 

Because as the flames’ dance reflected in Iron Man’s armour, and as the two biggest armies of all galaxies and times engaged in a fight big enough to shake an entire reality, the man behind the yellow-and-red mask had eyes only for Peter. And Peter had been unable to stop himself from whispering back, “I’m sorry I ever went away, dad.”

“Dad?” Tony had stiffened for a second, before squeezing him tighter. “Dad. I like that word, son. I really do.”

Afterwards, when Tony had been about to snap his fingers, Peter was quite sure—no, he was _ completely _ and _ absolutely _certain—that Tony had looked at him. Because he had been busy trying not to kill a soul, screaming at his SpiderSuit's IA to switch from Death Mode to Mild Damage And Knockout Mode, Peter hadn’t realised what was happening until it had become a what had happened. But still, he had sensed what, later on, Aunt May would baptise as the Peter Tingle. Something inside his chest had done a funny flip. There had been a very slight sommersaulting of his heart, the briefest sensation that something big was going to happen. A tingle.

Then it was too late.

If only the Peter Tingle had taught him only a second earlier what was about to happen, maybe he could’ve helped Tony somehow. Borne the weight of the universe’s salvation with him, or simply held his left hand as he snapped the universe free from the Chitauri.

“Peter, hey. Hey.” Peter lowers his gaze absently and registers the fact that MJ’s hand is on his shoulder, MJ herself having stood up to lean above the table towards him. But his mind is swamped by the acrid scent of smoke and the scorching heat of a battlefield in flames, and immediately files said fact away. 

“I couldn’t save him,” he whispers. “Couldn’t do anything. I could only watch him die.”

His Adam’s apple bobs up and down unsteadily, and the sailor’s knot in his throat makes his voice hoarse.

As MJ is beginning to say, “But Peter, you…”, he snaps his head upwards and fixes the darkest glare she’s ever seen in his brown eyes in hers. 

“MJ, I have to get outta here.”

“Alright. Alright, just… Alright.” MJ nods to herself, her dark curls sliding down her arms, and helps him up awkwardly from the other side of the table. “Wait a sec, I’m going to crack a rib. C’mere, we’re leaving.”

Real world charges full-on, and washes over Peter as he returns to the present. The Big Gay Ice Cream shop is full of families taking a break on their Saturday afternoon and tourists who wandered in because NY Eater told them to do so. While people are something Peter usually doesn’t mind, this time they are too much. Because of the flashback to the battle, his Peter Tingle has gone crazy, and he swears he can hear the woman two tables ahead of them biting her Society Dame Trucker, every white nonpariel pearl a crunching torture. 

He knows what the guy with the Chilean accent just ordered—American Globs for both him and his boyfriend. 

He knows the little girl in the bathroom can’t stop crying because she slipped inside the too-big porcelain bowl of the toilet and now she’s unable to get out. 

He knows someone just entered the shop, bragging about having already tasted every flavour the Big Gay has to offer. 

He knows that’s not true, because a waitress at the counter must’ve heard them and has muttered to her colleague, _ That’s the one who always orders a strawberry milkshake. Every flavour, my ass. _

He knows said colleague was busy dipping an ice cream in rainbow sprinkles, because he can hear the disgusting sound these make as they sink into the soft serve, and he knows said colleague’s snicker sounds like hysterical-chimpunk shrieking. 

He knows the seat he’s occupying is rough under his thighs. 

He knows one of the lights in the kitchen is buzzing its last minutes away before it burns out. 

He knows every single colour, every single movement, every single sound and smell and laughter and noise and shape and lightbulb and toilet and door and creaking table in the store, all at once, all too many.

He knows he has to get out or else he’ll go nuts.

“Look at me, Peter. At MJ, not at nowhere, alright? On your feet, we’re getting out. Remember, eyes on MJ. Quite easy.” 

MJ’s hand in his anchors him to the present, right before his mind wanders off to some wasteland of madness and crunchy Dorothy cones. He closes his eyes, dizzy from the world around him, and tries to enclose his Peter Tingle in the softness of MJ’s skin, the gentle pressure of her fingers around his. Because there are too many smells—the same way there are too many flavours in Big Gay—, he searches for MJ’s and, once found, he focuses on noticing it alone, MJ alone.

The world he’s in is overwhelming. The world he was in is dark. But when MJ is the only world he can perceive, the only world he wants to be in, things are a little less scary and a little easier. 

Everything is with MJ, she who can scowl down even the worst feelings until they scatter.

Peter bites his lower lip until he tastes blood, and even after that. It’s as if his chest were full of flowers blossoming all at the same time. Only they aren’t poppies or lilies—they’re rosemary and purple hyacinthus. Memories and sorrow. They’re pressing against his ribs, growing, expanding until there’s no more space they can take and hungry for more even then. Full of petals, Peter’s lungs can’t seem to fill up enough. It feels like choking. It feels like a star going supernova.

It feels like falling to an abyss, really, and Peter isn’t sure what’d be worse—to find there’s a bottom to crash again, or to never stop falling deeper into the dark.

“We’re outside now,” says MJ softly. She pulls him softly towards the mouth of an alley, so that they aren’t in the middle of the crowded street. “Is there any place you’d like to go to? Somewhere more private, or simply quieter.”

Parting his lips, Peter lets go a shaky breath while he thinks. But it’s as if his mind were a TV gone noisy, his boggled thoughts buzzing a white noise that deafens him. He’s not sure whether he wants to go anywhere—is there any place where loss is too heavy to climb up to?

“Yeah. Yeah,” he mutters, running a hand through his hair. “But I don’t think you’ll like it, MJ. It’s high. Really, really high.”

Throwing her head backwards, MJ presses her lips into a thin line. Her eyes move frantically, as if binge-reading a text only they can see. In the end she tilts her head to look at Peter, and says, “This is not about whether I like it or not. This is about whether it makes you feel better or not. Does it?”

“But, I mean, MJ, if you—”

“That was a ‘yes-or-no’ question, Peter. No need to justify your answer. Does it make you feel better, or not?”

“Yes,” says Peter under his breath.

“Awright.” MJ lets go of Peter’s hand and loops her arms around his neck, nuzzling the curve of his jaw softly. “Let’s go, Spiderboy.”

“But I’m—”

“Underage.” Peter can feel MJ’s smile against the base of his jaw, which makes him feel warm. “Which makes you a boy, Mister Spiderboy.”

For a moment Peter wishes he could be just a regular teenager in love, instead of a grief-struck superhero. Although, if he were regular, he wouldn’t have met the Tony behind the masks of Iron Man and Anthony Stark, or would he? So he settles for wishing that deaths were easier to live with.

“Alright. Hold on tight.”

Taking a deep breath, Peter shakes his wrists a little before looping an arm aroud MJ’s waist and shooting the first web.

  
  
“I swear I’m about to puke even yesterday’s breakfast,” gabbles MJ, bending over with her hands on her knees as she struggles to catch her breath. “How the hell do you do this all the time?”

With a shy smile, Peter pats the pockets of his trousers and fishes a package of Kleenex to offer to her. “Spiders don’t get dizzy from spinning their webs, so I guess I don’t, either.”

“But you don’t spin the web. It’s synthetic stuff, if my memory serves me right. Because it does. Right?” MJ shoots Peter a quick glance before accepting the Kleenex and wiping some sweat off her forehead with a tissue. “With all this swinging and building-jumping, I’m not sure I remember even my name anymore.”

“Don’t worry, your memory is fine on spider-issues. I don’t produce the webs with my body—but all the same, I’ve got a spider’s endurance, which I suppose helps manage the whole web-shot transportation thing.”

Wanting to give MJ a minute so that her world stops spinning around her, Peter sinks his hands in his pockets and looks around. Above their heads, a cloudless blue sky. Below their feet, a maze of concrete and asphalt.

Behind their backs, Peter’s favourite tribute to Tony.

Although in interviews and at public events Tony liked to pretend he was an arrogant businessman with too much money and too little filter, who liked saving the world every now and then because it made him feel praised and counted as his good action of the week, he wasn’t like that. Someone like that wouldn’t have donated a hundred MRI machines to hospitals all across the country. Someone like that wouldn’t have developed 3D printers able to build organic tissues and shape them into livers, or skin, or kidneys, from a sample of the patient’s DNA such as a hair or some saliva. Someone like that wouldn’t have bought several thousands of blankets, pillows, and clothing for the orphanages and shelters in New York, and set an open Wi-Fi in his building for local students to use it in study rooms, and sent a Teddy Bear to every homeless or parentless child in either type of facility.

Someone like that wouldn’t have become Iron Man, in the first place. Much less sacrificed themselves to protect the universe from a genocidal being like Thanos.

“That’s what you wanted to show me.”

MJ’s soft voice makes Peter snap out of it. Caught off-guard, he blinks a few times as the world reappears around him, and says, “Uh, yes.”

She rests her head on Peter’s shoulder and watches the chimney in front of them.

Someone like the man Tony pretended to be wouldn’t have been depicted like that.

The grafitti shows a figure that’s half wearing Iron Man’s armour, half wearing one of Anthony Stark’s expensive Armani suits. The bright red and shiny yellow of the superhero armour are the exact shade of the original. As for the black of the suit, Peter isn’t sure whether it’s possible to have two black things painted in different shades of the colour, but the suit is the same tonality as Tony’s anyways. Iron Man’s mask is expressionless, while Anthony Stark’s shows a cheeky smile.

In the middle of Iron Man’s chest, there’s one half of Tony’s blue arc reactor. In the middle of Anthony Stark’s, there’s one half of a human heart, one of the arteries bending towards the reactor.

Half superhero, half regular human being.

Peter can’t help getting teary eyes every time he sees this particular graffiti.

“Artsy,” murmurs MJ. “There’s something unique about it. I know the artist, I think—a Miles Morales.”

“But that’s not why I like it.” With a sigh, Peter steps closer to the chimney and raises a hand to run his fingers over the lines of the half arc reactor, half heart. “I like it because this was Tony. Everyone knows he was brave, everyone knows he protected us from whatever tried to do harm to Earth and avenged us when it was too late. Everyone knows he was rich enough to make you sick, and had the brains of Einstein and Bill Gates combined and upgraded. But few realise he was also a human being. He had worries that kept him up at night, he had fear that he’d lose his loved ones, he had doubts that he wasn’t enough. Good Lord, he had a daughter. An now he’s dead and it doesn’t matter what he was, because he’s not with us anymore to prove us either wrong or right. He died for all of us. But he wasn’t invincible, nor did he believe he was. He was fucking _ frightened _of leaving us all alone and unprotected. And still he went and died.”

“Peter…”

“My point is, he was just like you or me, and he could only give so much before his body gave in, and he went and overdid it for all and every one of us. Now people idealize him, as if he had been our knight in a shiny armour all along and a saint and a completely selfless guy who lived only for others. He was just a man, MJ, whose hair was starting to gray and whose favourite drink was Desperados, who selfishly didn’t want to leave his daughter and wife and friends behind and who felt fear and anger and envy and hate and fuck, MJ, now he’s gone forever and I don’t know how to deal with things without him.”

Gently, MJ takes Peter’s hand and squeezes, and when she kisses his tears from his cheeks he realises that he began crying at some point. Now he can’t stop. So he doesn’t even bother trying, and allows himself to break down.

“You loved him so much.” It’s not a question.

“Of course I did. MJ, if you had met him—he was sarcastic, and cocky, and had a pride bigger than Texas. He wouldn’t let me go on missions at first, and then he had Happy babysit me all day. Once he called me in the middle of the night to ask whether I thought he should make his personal Instagram account public or not. He was stubborn, and arrogant at times. And he was the best man I’ve ever known.” Peter swallows, and the knot in his throat hurts even more in response. “He was like my father. Sometimes I called him ‘dad’ by mistake.”

“And he punished you without your suit for a week?”

“No. The first time he seemed shocked for a few seconds. Then he laughed and tousled my hair into a mess, and said, ‘Maybe I’ll ask Pepper to turn me into an actual dad the next time we go jogging, son. Maybe I will’. And he also said, ‘Though I don’t know what I’d name my child. Names for IAs are one thing, but names for human babies are quite another. Imagine they don’t like it when they’re older—they have to stick with it until they’re eighteen and legally able to get a new one’.”

Both he and MJ laugh. Somehow Peter has aced Tony’s speech, and even if MJ can’t tell how accurate he’s been, he can. And it makes him feel like he carries with him a part of Tony that’s much more personal than his SpiderSuit or E.D.I.T.H.

With his index finger, Peter traces the outline of the graffiti half-heart-half-arc-reactor. “He didn’t want something as mainstream as Mary, Emma, Luke or Jacob, but he didn’t want names from Prehistory such as Edmund or Louise, either. And I told him to ask Pepper, because honestly, she has a far better taste than him in nearly everything. But he explained that he had the whole speech already planned in his head, and a crucial part of it was suggesting names because he’d read on WikiHow that it made the idea less of an idea and more of a real possibility.”

MJ raises a hand, and he pauses. “Are you seriously telling me Anthony Edward Stark looked up ‘how to tell your wife you wanna have children’ on WikiHow? Holy shit.”

“In fact, he looked up almost everything on WikiHow. And I mean literally everything, from ‘how to prepare homemade bolognese sauce’ to ‘how to calculate Pi by throwing frozen hot dogs’. By the way, turns out you actually _ can _calculate Pi by throwing frozen hot dogs. It was the weirdest day of my life.”

“Why doesn’t it surprise me?”

With a tiny smile, Peter shrugs. “Maybe because you’ve already seen that being a superhero is 12% actually saving the world, and 88% doing random and absolutely unnecessary things with your powers.”

As he speaks, the Peter Tingle warns him that a pigeon is about to poop on him, and he jumps so that the stomping sound of the landing scares the bird away. “See?”

Staring at the pigeon, MJ points out, “That wasn’t unnecessary. It was about to go to the toilet in our heads, and I washed my hair this morning in a murderous mood because all I wanted was to sleep some more.”

“But it was completely random. Anyways—come here, let’s sit down. You’re one degree away from turning from bonbon into hot chocolate.”

Peter sits down against the brick wall, thankful for the shadow it provides. But MJ doesn’t follow. When he looks at her, she’s staring at him, shaking a little. She doesn’t last even a full second more before bursting into scandalous, heartfelt laughter. “Jesus Christ, Peter. Jesus. Holy. Christ,” she pants, bending over and holding her stomach. “Is that a pickup line from WikiHow, too?”

“Just sit down, will you?” mumbles Peter, flustered, as his cheeks are set aflame by the greatest shame he’s ever felt. He makes a mental note to never ask Happy again for love advice. Never. Again.

They keep quiet for a few seconds, even though there are still words that Peter needs to let out, heavy in his tongue. Clawing at his chest from the inside as they try to carve their way out into the open air. So he gives himself a few seconds to decide how to go on, and shyly weaves his fingers into MJ’s before clearing his throat.

“Okay, where were we?”

“Peter had looked up on WikiHow the best way to tell Peper he wanted to have children.” MJ’s hand squeezed Peter’s. “And he was freaking out because WikiHow said he should have some names in mind, and his were either boring as hell or ancient.”

“Right. So before he panicked too much, I said, ‘Well, let’s think up some gender-neutral names. Those are good for both boys and girls, so it saves you the whole sex-and-gender trouble, Mr. Stark’. At first he didn’t really get my point, but then he made this face—” Peter opened his eyes wide, as if in great enlightenment, and ran through his hair the hand with which he wasn’t holding MJ’s. “—and said, ‘Holy crap, boy, you mean if they’re trans, right? That’d be amazing. Not their being trans, I mean, that’s neither amazing nor terrible, I mean the whole gender-neutral name. It’d save them a lotta trouble. Yeah, let’s go for those.’ So we spent the rest of the afternoon thinking up names, and in the end we found quite a long list.”

“Did he ever get the chance to use any?”

Suddenly it’s hard to breathe, because it’s not words clawing at his chest anymore, but images. A black dress, lovely curls. Sounds. The musical laughter of a child.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Yeah, he did. During the five years the Snap's effects lasted, he did have a daughter with his wife.”

“And which was it?”

Peter remembers the feeling of his heart swelling and shrinking at the same time, the impossible mixture of joy and sadness, when he met a certain little girl with Pepper’s sharp wits and Tony’s even sharper tongue.

“One I suggested,” he whispers. “Morgan.”

There isn’t much else to say. At least not on a rooftop in the middle of New York as cars and cabs honk their way across the streets. And MJ knows, because MJ has taken her time throughout her younger years to learn the art of reading situations instead of Facebook status updates, hearts instead of Instagram likes, and faces instead of emojis. So she reaches for Peter’s waist and brings him a little closer, allowing him to rest both his head and his grief on her shoulder. 

  
  


“Sorry that I, uh...” stammers Peter as the sun begins to go down.

“I get the feeling that you’re about to apologize for ‘ruining our date’ or something as self-deprecating and shitty as that, and I swear that, if you do, I’ll push you into that fountain, most probably get you concussed, and never feel sorry about it.”

As she finishes the sentence, MJ offers him the sweetest smile a set of lips can convey, and squeezes his hand in both affection and warning, batting her eyelashes at him.

To Peter’s mind, MJ is the human version of an oleander flower—stunning, pulse-disrupting, tough, but deadly when pissed off. And Peter saying that he’s sorry all the time doesn’t piss her off, but she definitely isn’t happy that he does. Mostly because ‘Not everything bad that happens is your fault, Peter. Not everything bad that happens and is your fault needs to be apologized for, Peter. Invest all that precious time and saliva in something more useful’. 

(A something-more-useful which, as Peter discovered when he innocently asked, ‘Such as?’, had a great deal to do with saliva in particular)

“Alright, alright. Message received, so please don’t push me into the fountain.”

“Good boy.”

The night is falling upon their heads, and the Washington Square Park is almost empty of families, teenagers having an amateur photo booth, and shirtless jocks going for a run. It will soon be empty of “Peter-and-MJ”s, too. But for the moment they’re enjoying the growing calm, and they don’t feel in any rush to empty the park of their presence.

“So. Have you ever seen little Morgan, then?” asks MJ softly.

Nodding, Peter looks away as he says, “Yeah. At Mr Stark’s funeral.”

“Only?”

“Yup.”

A thick silence follows. One that, as Peter both knows and fears, is the prelude to MJ’s hectic suggestion of the day. With every second that ticks by, Peter grows a little more anxious to hear what she’s plotting.

“Maybe you can go make a visit someday,” she points out matter-of-factly after a while. “You know. Say hello. Bring her cookies and a little present from Big Brother Peter. Play basketball with her. Brotherly stuff.”

If Peter doesn’t reject the idea right away, it’s only because he’s too busy feeling shocked at the thought of simply dropping by the Starks’ home. Even if it’s not in the heart of a forest anymore, because back there it was slightly difficult to find schools which Morgan could attend or supermarkets to buy groceries, it’s still the Starks’ home. And Peter isn’t scared of Pepper, or little Morgan—in truth, he’s frightened by the memories they will bring back.

The feelings.

The.

Pain.

“So? Sounds good?” inquires MJ, furrowing her brow. 

“Uh. Maybe some other day.” _ Maybe _ as in _ Not on my watch _, but yeah. Maybe, let’s say. 

“Foul liar. That’s your people-pleasing face.” MJ punches his arm softly. “Don’t tell me yes if you’re thinking no, Peter. Tell me no and stand your ground. Respect your own voice—and if it means someone gets pissed, and even if that someone is me, you flip that someone the bird and proceed to do or say whatever the fuck you want.”

All alien cultures above. Peter has been falling hard for MJ for years straight, but now she seems determined to make him _ plummet _.

“Come on. Tell me no.”

“A-alright. Uh, it _ does _sound good, because I mean, you always have great ideas and—”

“_ Peter. _”

“—and still, I don’t feel ready to pay them a visit, so while I think it’d be great to meet little Morgan and check on Mrs. Potts, that ‘some other day’ when I’ll do so might happen later than sooner. Okay?”

MJ is silent for a few seconds. Then she says, “But for the ‘Okay’, you did really good, Peter. Assertiveness power. That’s the boy I want out of the shell.”

They don’t really talk much more on their way back to MJ’s neighbourhood.

By the way either of them parts their lips to say something, the streetlights have been burning bright for the better part of an hour already. They’re a few minutes away from MJ’s, as well as a few minutes early on her curfew. 

(Do MJ’s parents seriously think a curfew is going to work if one night MJ feels like going out late, arriving late, or not arriving at all?)

(And if they do indeed, do MJ’s parents know MJ at all?)

“Hey, Peter,” calls MJ softly. “I’m… Sorry if I was too harsh earlier. Didn’t mean to.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Don’t worry.” 

They walk the short distance to MJ’s house that’s left quietly, MJ clicking her tongue rhythmically. Although her lips are closed, Peter’s heightened senses are locked on her little percussion session.

“You were listening, weren’t you?” MJ asks when they reach her house, knitting her brows in wonder.

“To what?”

“My tongue.”

“Uh. Oh, yup.” 

“Creepy.”

“Sorry.”

“Just joking.”

“Oh. Still sorry, just in case.”

“Just in what case?”

“In case you change your mind.”

She rolls her eyes and slaps Peter’s forehead softly. “Hey, this is MJ to Peter’s overreactive self-esteem. Cut it off, you little bore, before I have to take serious measures.”

After speaking, she pats Peter’s heart.

“And you, blood-beating coward, better start standing up for yourself. I ain’t got the time nor the will to play the knight in a shiny armour for the rest of my life. That’s absolutely toxic, so put those guts to work.”

Yes, MJ is speaking to Peter’s self-esteem and literal heart. And yes, he can’t help feeling dizzy with adoration as she does so. But he’s a teenager leading a double life, who lives in New York and has saved the world two or three times, and also kept up an average most people would frown upon from secret envy. Life is already complicated enough... So he feels all the butterflies and gets the blush and stutters and notices how his heartbeat has gone nuts. And that makes him feel like a normal guy, which is a kind of simplicity he’s happy to experience. 

MJ makes him feel loved. But, above it all, she makes him feel normal. Un-weird. Un-Avenger. Un-mortal. Un-limited. 

“I’m so happy that you’re in my life, MJ,” he whispers, and then he offers a shy smile that’s not his TV-interview-smile or his someone-please-get-me-out-of-high-school-smile, but his genuine I-feel-like-smiling-smile.

She blinks once, twice, speechless—amazingly enough—for once. Looks down to their feet. Puts one of hers atop of one of Peter’s, then the other. Hugs his waist not to fall backwards. Looks up at him and says,

“And I’m so happy to have noticed you were in mine.” She gives him a sweet, chaste peck on the lips, and when they break apart she’s still close enough that Peter is breathing her breaths. “But don’t make me say it aloud in the light of day. Someone might find out I’m not a hundred-percent toughie and get out of hand.”

“I’m pretty sure no-one doubts your toughness, MJ. You even love toughly. It’s kind of. Like. An emotional boot-camp.”

Her laughter is what Peter’s breathing now, her intoxicating, never-ending energy. And honestly? Air is so overrated these days.

But sleep isn’t. So Peter doesn’t quite like being unable to fall asleep that same night. For some reason he, a lifelong heavy sleeper, has been rolling from one side of the bed to the other for a good hour already. Sure, it’s still midsummer New York, so hot the air right above the concrete undulates even at night. But he’s lived through a number of midsummer New York nights already, so that’s no excuse. 

In the end he reaches for his phone, tapping on the screen only to see that he’s nearer to dawn than to sunset. Three hurrahs for insomnia. 

It’s long past the witching hour, but there’s still some kind of supernatural feeling to the dark sky that makes Peter brave. Not brave as in I’m-going-to-get-inside-a-spaceship-I-have-no-clue-if-I-will-be-able-to-ever-get-out-alive-from, or as in Why-not-ask-MJ-out. Brave as in…

Virginia Potts, despite it being around three AM, doesn’t speak drowsily. She doesn’t even take long to answer the phone—in fact, it doesn’t get to ring even once.

“Peter.”

“Mistress Stark. I mean, Potts. I mean—”

“Call me Pepper. Pete,” she adds after a short pause. “Is something wrong?”

At first Peter doesn’t answer. Then he does, and says, “No. Well, yeah. Yeah, something’s actually quite wrong. But we can’t do anything about it. Still, it feels wrong. It’s just like—there’s this emptiness, this hole in my chest that won’t stop hurting. Supposedly loss gets less difficult as time goes by. But it doesn’t, you know? I just miss him more with every passing day, because every hour without him adds up to all the hours without him before that one. Feels like one day it’ll crush me.”

Pepper is quiet for enough seconds that Peter knows he shouldn’t have said that. Nor called, in the first place. What kind of freak calls you in the middle of the night to blabber to you about your dead husband? A Peter kind of freak. “Uh, sorry, I don’t think I should’ve…”

“I know,” she whispers then. It’s such a small sound, Peter isn’t sure whether he would’ve heard it were it not for his spider-heightened audition. “I miss him too.”

And then there’s nothing else that could be said. 

There’s nothing else that _ needs _to be said.

None of them hangs up. Peter, because she makes him feel understood. Pepper, because… Well, Peter can only wish there’s a reason why. 

Hours pass as they share their respective silences. 

The darkness around Peter starts thickening into his PC, his desk, his chair, his wardrobe, his books and old first-prized science projects. The shadows slowly dissolve into colours, subdued at first. 

“Thank you,” Pepper says then.

Peter, caught off-guard, gets startled. “What for?”

“During the day, I have Morgan. I’m in charge of Stark Industries. Some Avenger issues are my responsibility, too. There are things that need to be taken care of. People to be met. Contracts to be signed. Associates to be heard from. Dinners to be cooked. Not much time left to overthink. But the nights are different. My daughter is asleep. My friends are, too. My psychologist’s orders are that after 11PM, no business. My books—” Her voice breaks.

“They’re all full of Tony. Many were presents. Others were already mine. But in every single one of them he underlined his favourite sentences, put a Post-It in the scenes he liked. Handwrote comments with a pencil. Even drew some characters, sometimes. Under every dedication, he’d write his own. To me, to Morgan. To the other children we were going to have. To his friends. To God, even, sometimes. And he’d always, always include me in the acknowledgements.”

She’s quiet for a long, long moment.

“Every night, he took a book and read to me. Then he dropped it to the floor, laughed as I scolded him for it, and pick it back up to return it to its place. And then he always, always said, ‘Lights off, JARVIS’, and lay down by my side to cuddle me. The lights went down slowly, you see, and he liked to say that he had programmed it so because it was a romantic thing. He…” Frowns don’t sound, but Peter heard hers anyways. “He said he read it on WikiHow, which is obviously a foolproof love guru.

“Some nights we’d talk. Some others we’d grieve for the ones lost after the Snap. Sometimes we spoke about what we’d do the next day. Sometimes we’d remember what we had done yesterday, or that very same day. Every single day during my pregnancy, he kissed my belly and told it—_her_—a story. My nights were Tony’s. Now I don’t know how to make them mine again.”

Something inside Peter breaks. “Me neither,” he whispers in a choked voice. “Every time I dream, it’s of him.”

Then he realises what Pepper thanked him for.

There’s quiet for a little longer. 

She says, “Me too.”

She says, “Thank you for keeping me company, Peter.”

She says, “Come over anytime you like.”

She says, “Morgan likes you. She says you’re his big brother.”

She says, “And Tony said you called him ‘Dad’ once, by accident.”

She says, “So you can count yourself a part of this family.”

He says, “I’m sorry, Pepper. For all—for everything and everyone that’ve been lost.”

She says, “I know.”

She says, “I am, too.”

She says, “We’re both so sorry.”

He says, “Goodbye.”

He says, “Hear you tomorrow.”

She says, “Thank you, Pete.”

She says, “I can see why Tony kept a picture of you two together in his office.”

She says, “Hear you tomorrow.”

Birds start chirping right after they hang up. At the same time, on a tacit agreement.

It’s scorching hot in New York City, Peter is crazy about vanilla ice-creams. And he’ll invite little Morgan and beautiful Pepper to one someday. Because that’s what the one man with the not-so-well-trimmed-but-still-decent beard would’ve loved to do, and because that’s what families do for each other. Even not blood-related families brought together by death and loneliness.

Specially those ones.

**Author's Note:**

> Began writing this literally months ago. 'Endgame' hit me right in my feels, and so did 'Far From Home'. So yeah, here's to my (and all of you's) battered Marvelite heart. We deserve this kind of stuff! (And Peter. Poor boyo doesn't just deserve this kind of stuff—he actually needs it) 
> 
> (Reasons-and-toughts-behind-this-little-story time!) In FFH there was almost no grieving, I felt that I really needed to do something about it. Peter and Tony shared a very special relationship, Tony being something very similar to a father and Peter being his protegé. It simply didn't make sense to have Peter not showing all the grief he's got to be feeling after Tony sacrificed himself, plus it wasn't fair. Mental health exists. Emotional health exists. They, too, can get pretty messed up when something as painful as a death of a beloved one happens, and it's wrong to hide that away or to give it less importance than it does. Peter was mostly fine, and the screenwriter only remembered that oh, right, Tony died and he was super attached to him so maybe it makes sense to have Peter grieve a little? like, what, two times? Three? Four isn't even a possibility. I'm fairly sure it was two, but I'll concede them the benefit of doubt and say three out of politeness. I'm in my second year of my Psychology degree, and I'm really sad that we continue to underrepresentate things that are so vital to our well-being as emotion. 
> 
> We're basically driven by it—in fact, LeDoux's theory postulates that thalamic-amygdaline connections occur prior to thalamic-cortical ones, and that the amygdala exerts a greater influence on the prefrontal cortex than the latter does on the amygdala. It's important that we specify that the thalamus is a brain structure where we do a first, very primitive processing of the stimuli; the amygdala is a structure related to emotion, and in particular to fear and agressivity; and that the prefrontal cortex is responsible for conscious thought, logic and rationality, planification of our actions, imagination, abstract though, and many other distinctive abilities of the human mind.
> 
> Translated into everyday language, this theory found out that emotional processing of the information, and emotional responses, occur before conscious proccesing and actively planned responses; and that emotion influences our thinking a lot more than our thinking influences emotion. Traditionally, philosophers—such as David Hume—, scientists and, consequently, our culture, have considered emotion to be subdued to thought, in addition to being troublesome and in need of controlling. Nowadays we know that repressing our emotions leads only to trouble—mental and emotional health issues, which have a big impact on physical health because one of the three components of the emotions is the physiological response.
> 
> Although I might or might not have gotten a little carried away by Neuroscience, I think the message (if you managed to read through that, and for some reason you haven't ditched my Bible-lengthy footnote yet) is clear. Emotion is extremely important for us, and in how we both perceive the world and react to it. That's why continuing to treat it as something unimportant, or even troublesome, is incredibly toxic. DC's latest film, 'Joker'—which has become, by the way, my favourite despite it being really triggering for me—demonsters as much, only it works with mental health, rather than emotion. But the message is quite the same as the one I'm trying to send out to the world. Don't pay attention to it, undervalue its importance, and you're mostly bound to never understand your emotions and suffer through that ignorance. Acquiring emotional competence to deal healthily with our emotions demands that we learn to accept them first. Which is something we won't be able to do if our culture—Marvel, I'm talking to ya—keeps tiptoeing around them for the sake of some fighting-and-Venice-crumbling scenes and a good dose of teenage drama.
> 
> I refuse to tiptoe around emotion. And here's my very first act of defiance—my little hymn to grief, my offering to mourning, and my present to all of you.
> 
> (<3 On a completely different note, maybe I already said this in a different fanfiction but. English ain't my mother tongue, so if there's any mistake, or misspelling, or grammatical crime, I apologise for the startle and humbly thank the kind souls who decide to point them out so that I can fix it <3)


End file.
